


Shaped for the Fury

by smaragdbird



Category: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Genre: Backstory, Childhood Memories, Gen, Introspection, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 05:22:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13047354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/pseuds/smaragdbird
Summary: She would've paid the price if Vortigern hadn't done it first. The last thing she wanted to be was like him.





	Shaped for the Fury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hiddencait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/gifts).



When she had been young, she had always wanted to run. She had felt that she would have been safer living with the monsters of the badlands than living with humans. Animals were easy to understand. Hunger, cold, survival, there wasn’t much complexity in their thoughts. Slipping into the mind of an eagle let her soar above the forests, free and untouchable; a cat’s body was so much more agile than her own, the scents of the world so much stronger; a snake’s bite could kill before your enemy even knew he had been bitten.

She had felt that if people were hunting her like a beast then she should have been with them.

“Where are you running to?” Merlin had asked as he brushed mud from her face. 

“Away”, she replied, glaring sullenly up at him. She didn’t understand why he didn’t want her to leave. People were not safe, whether they had magic or not. People were dangerous. “Far away”, she added when Merlin didn’t reply.

“And what would do there?” He asked finally. Magic flowed from his hands like a warm summer breeze, drying her hair and her clothes. 

“Be safe”, she replied, exasperated because Merlin was an adult. He was meant to be smart, but why would he not understand? They had caught her near the docks this time, trying to get onto a boat. Vortigern was the king of Britain but she had heard people talk about other places, faraway places. 

“Remember what I told you about the sea?” Merlin asked, gently. 

She looked aside. “I wasn’t trying to swim”, she said. “I wouldn’t have touched the water if I’d gotten on that boat.”

“And the creatures Vortigern has allied with wouldn’t have cared. No mage can leave this island anymore, you know that.”

“But you won’t let me leave for the forest either!” She yelled, frustrated with his inability to understand and stomped her foot. It echoed through the empty cave. It didn’t use to be empty but Vortigern’s men were picking them off one by one.

“You won’t be safe there, either. You know that.” He rested his hands on her shoulders and waited until she looked at him. “Safety for you is not a where, it’s a when. When the rightful king returns you will be safe. But until then you have to take care that Vortigern never notices you, never sees you. He will not tolerate another mage and especially not the daughter of his oldest friend.” 

Her father, the betrayer of mages. Her father, the traitor to his king. Her father, Mordred, whose name was never spoken around here. A figure of stories from the time when mages hadn’t been hunted like beasts or so she had been told. There had been a time when their craft had been respected, when the king had been their peer instead of their executioner.

She was never quite sure whether to believe these kinds of stories or not. Sometimes she suspected that Bedivere and Merlin had made them up to give her comfort and a version of the future to strive for.

“If we were so powerful”, she asked Merlin, “Then how did Vortigern kill us all?”

“Because he paid a terrible price”, Merlin told her. “There are many ways to power but some are so vile they’ll blacken even the purest heart.”

Adults had called a lot of things vile and evil that she understood as instincts, so his words did not scare her as much as he might have wanted. She tilted her head and after a long moment asked, “What price?”

Merlin met her eyes and answered, “The murder of a loved one by your hands.”

She felt revulsion and something akin to regret because even if she had been willing to pay the price to get rid of Vortigern, there was no one left. Her mother was dead, her father too but she couldn’t remember him, so he wouldn’t have counted. You couldn’t love someone you had never met.

Merlin seemed satisfied with her silence and ruffled her hair. “Try not to run away again until tomorrow. You need to sleep”, he told her with a warm smile as he stood up.

As he walked away she tried to imagine what it would be like to kill Merlin. She was small, she wouldn’t be able to do it herself. But there were beasts out there that could kill everyone. Not Vortigern, he was protected by magic, and probably so was Merlin. But she could imagine slipping into one of the giants snakes that had escaped from the badlands long ago. She would make it a quick, vicious attack, without hesitation and without mercy.

She had been able to imagine it but she would’ve never been able to do it. It would’ve made her just like Vortigern and she would never, ever be like him. She slipped into the minds of beasts to hide her human face. He was a true monster masquerading as human. She would’ve paid the price for her people’s salvation if he had not done it first.

These days when she wanted to escape she slipped into the mind of a fish and dove to the bottom of a lake, enjoying a kind of silence that could not be found anywhere else. She took over the Blackleg’s guard dogs and turned them against their masters every time they executed another of her people. She soared across glens and valleys as a falcon, beholden to no one but the strength of her wings that let her leave this earth at least for some time. 

Sometimes, if she craved affection and the touch of another human, she slipped into one of the numerous cats that prowled the streets and entered a home to find a kind soul that would pet her and stroke her until the craving deep inside her was satisfied.

Like any trapped animal, eventually she surrendered to her captivity. She learned, she watched, she waited for the righteous king. And for a time when she would be safe.


End file.
